Turkey: Suicide bombing in Ankara - full text
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Six people were killed and at least 90 were injured on May 22, 2007, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives during the evening rush hour outside a busy shopping centre in the Ulus district of Ankara (the capital of Turkey). Kemal Onal, the governor of Ankara, on May 23 identified Guven Akkus, a 28-year-old man from central Turkey, as the suicide bomber and said that the kind of explosives used in the attack suggested that he had been a member of an illegal Kurdish separatist group. Onal’s comments prompted widespread speculation that the Kurdistan People's Congress (Kongra-Gel)--formerly known as the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (Kadek) and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)--was responsible for the atrocity.
Immediate context
The PKK had declared a unilateral ceasefire in September 2006, but announced a resumption of hostilities on May 18, 2007, just days before the blast in Ankara. The attack in the capital occurred amidst heightened political tensions in Turkey over an ongoing dispute between the government and secular loyalists, in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), an Islamist party, was accused of planning to turn predominantly Muslim but constitutionally nonreligious Turkey into an Islamist state by proposing an Islamist candidate for the presidency.
The PKK had been held responsible for a series of bombings, kidnappings, and other armed attacks since it was founded, but it was not the only outlawed group to have launched bomb attacks in Turkey. Other Kurdish separatist groups, left-wing and right-wing militants, and hardline Islamists had all been held responsible for violent attacks in recent years. Some hardline Islamists operating in Turkey were thought to be connected to Osama bin Laden ’s al-Qaida network.
Amongst the worst attacks were those in November 2003 in which four devastating suicide bomb attacks were launched in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, whilst in March 2004 two suicide bombers attacked a restaurant in Istanbul, opening fire on around 40 diners before setting off explosives attached to their bodies, killing a waiter and wounding five other people. In December 2006 three Turkish soldiers were killed (and 14 injured) in the south-eastern city of Sirnak when the PKK detonated a remote-controlled landmine as the military convoy passed by.
Reaction and outlook
On May 23, 2007, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the Ankara suicide bombing as "a vicious, ruthless terror attack". Most observers reported that the authorities had blamed the attack on the PKK, but--in a statement posted on a website frequently associated with the outlawed group--the separatist group denied the accusations. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, it was widely reported in Turkey that eight people had been detained in connection with the incident, but governor Onal refused to release any details and the police also declined to comment.
Historical context
The Republic of Turkey, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, was established in 1923, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was regarded as the "founder" of modern Turkey, after successfully leading Turkish nationalists in a war of independence in 1919-23. Atatürk served as the country’s first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. Turkey, a country straddling Europe and Asia, became a secular state in 1923, removing from the constitution a clause which had recognised Islam as its official religion. During World War II Turkey remained neutral until March 1945, when it declared war on Germany and Japan and shortly before joining the UN (Turkey also joined NATO, in 1952).
The Republican People’s Party (PP), founded by Atatürk and Mustafa Ismet Inonu (who served as Turkey’s second president in 1938-50), ruled the country uninterrupted until the Democratic Party (DP), led by Celal Bayar, won Turkey’s first multiparty elections in May 1950 . Turkey’s democracy was, however, intermittently destabilised by a series of military coups (in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997). The country’s foreign policy became the focus of international attention in 1974, when Turkish military forces invaded and occupied Cyprus (an island in the Mediterranean Sea mainly inhabited by Greek and Turkish Cypriots) in an apparent attempt to prevent Greece from assuming control of the island. Since 1983 Turkey was the only state to formally recognise the independent state of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The divided island of Cyprus remained in 2007 a leading source of tension between Turkey and Greece.
The PKK (now known as the People’s Congress of Kurdistan or Kongra-Gel--KGK) began its insurgency campaign in the mid-1980s, in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state on territory comprising areas of south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria, and north-western Iran. The conflict had claimed the lives of more than 30,000 people, according to some estimates. After Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader, was captured by the Turkish authorities in a secret operation in Kenya in 1999, most PKK rebels fled across Turkey’s border to northern Iraq. The PKK announced a ceasefire in February 2000, but in May 2004 the group announced a resumption of hostilities, leading to an upsurge in its attacks against targets in Turkey.
Turkey became an associate member of the European Community (EC) in 1974 and had in recent years undertaken significant democratic and human rights reforms as part of its ongoing attempts to become a member of the EU .
